


Screw Loose

by hellotoysoldier



Series: Screw Loose [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: AU, Depression, Eating Disorders, F/F, Homophobia, M/M, Mavin, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Work In Progress, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1216363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellotoysoldier/pseuds/hellotoysoldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back on it, Michael would say that he's always felt this way. He's always hurt himself and he's always been sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I've actually got 6000 words of this typed out already. Hoping that posting this here on AO3 will kick my ass into gear. This is not my first fic and it's not my first Mavin, but it is my first post on this site. Hi :) And I'd say that I have three or four chapters typed up, so ten is a rough estimate. If ten chapters ends up not being enough, then there will be a second part.

Michael Jones has always had a hard time forgetting even the smallest things. He’s got quite a few memories from the house that his parents and him used to live in, which is weird because he was barely four years old when they moved out of that house. He remembered toys and he knew where every room in the house was. He remembered their three dogs, and he remembered the bed that him and his brother shared. 

However, he couldn’t remember when he started chewing his nails down until they bled. Thinking back on it, he’d probably say that he was born with that horrid habit because he was biting his nails at age two. If all of his nails were too short to chew, he would bite at the skin around the area, or at the back of his hand. His mom and dad would tell him not to do that, but he would always end up with bite marks and bruises and bloody fingernails anyway.

Another thing he can’t remember is the first time he ever bit the inside of his mouth. If anybody were to check, they’d see that the inside of his cheeks had been bitten raw, sometimes until they bled. Michael thought everyone did it, but his mom told him not to do that either.

So no, Michael couldn’t remember when or why he started doing those things. He remembered a lot of other things though, like that time he saw his dad throwing books around the house while his mom yelled at him. And he remembered the sound of his dad’s voice when he got really angry. And he remembered the last night he spent in that house.

It’s worth mentioning that Michael’s mother rarely smiled. Not before the divorce and certainly not after it. Michael understood what had happened between his parents, and he understood what it meant when his mother piled him and his brothers, Jimmy and David, into their van in the middle of the night. They ended up at Michael’s grandparents’ house. He remembered watching his brothers sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room. He remembered not being tired at all, so he went in search of his mother, finding her in the bathroom with his grandmother. They were inspecting a massive bruise on his mother’s shoulder.

“He hit me,” she said to his grandmother.

“I know, sweetheart. It’ll be okay.” she replied.

Michael didn’t understand that, though. Him and his brothers were constantly hitting each other, fighting over toys and whatnot. Neither of them meant any harm in the end. Maybe this was different.

When he asked her about Dad, she just told him that they wouldn’t be living together any longer. Michael can’t remember feeling sad about it. He remembered his mom chain smoking in her bedroom while reading Stephen King or Dean Koontz novels. She had shelves lined with books that she’d read and reread. He remembered that time that he got her to read him the first chapter of the very first Harry Potter book. She smiled then.

It’s not that she was unhappy with her life. It’s that everything had changed, all at once. He knew that she was happy around him and his brothers, but he also knew that it wasn’t going to last for long. She was sad. Michael could see it. 

Maybe that’s where all of this began.


	2. Slipping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back on it, Michael would say that he's always felt this way. He's always hurt himself and he's always been sad.
> 
> aka,
> 
> the author's way of telling the world about their life. This is the story of my life, told through the eyes of Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I remembered more of elementary school, this chapter would be longer. As Michael gets older, the chapters will get longer and, yeah, this isn't going to be a short story.

As a child, he would find himself slipping into his own head, eyes losing focus and mind wandering away from reality. He’d snap back seconds, minutes, ages later feeling as if he’d been completely separated from his own body. He was so young at the time that he just assumed that this was normal. Happened to everybody. Just shake it off and move on.

He was six years old when Sage Malcolm called him fat on his second day of kindergarten. Later that year, Brady Thompson made fun of him for needing glasses to keep himself from coloring outside of the lines and Payne Ackerman pushed him into a wall for taking the tub of Legos that he wanted to play with. In music class, all the kids made fun of him for singing too loudly. He would tone it down until he was practically whispering and the music teacher would constantly ask him to sing louder so that he wouldn’t get drowned out by all of the other voices. There was no in between. 

Kindergarten kind of sucked.

Being at home was alright though. When he got home from school, he would watch Pokemon and his mom would ask him how his day had been. Michael always told her that his day had been fine. After watching an hour of television, he would go outside to play with his neighbor, this scrawny boy named Jared, until he got called in for dinner. He wasn’t completely alone. No, he was only alone when he was at school.

That soon changed, however, when he discovered that Jared and him had the same first grade teacher. Things were starting to look up. Kids were still unpleasant to Michael, and they were unpleasant to Jared as well. Boys and girls made fun of Michael for being slightly chubbier than everyone else. They made fun of his curly red hair and his freckles. The worst part was when a couple of kids named Cade and Kyle told him that he wasn’t going to get any Christmas presents because they were going to kill Santa Clause. That was the year his mother had told him the truth about “Santa” and the “Tooth Fairy” and the “Easter Bunny.” Boys and girls made fun of Jared as well. They told him that he was too skinny. They told him that he was disgusting, honest to God accusing him of having Cooties. They made fun of him for smelling bad every single day. None of it mattered though. They ignored it in favor of talking about Pokemon cards.

At eight, Michael had a single moment in which he lost himself entirely. He was standing in his front yard, where Jared and both of his brothers were running around. The sun had gone down but the scene was lit orange by the streetlight in front of their house. One moment, he’d been laughing at something Jared had said and the next, he was standing on the sidewalk by himself, watching as Jared got on his bike to head home. He had no idea how much time had passed, or if he’d said anything to anybody. To this day, Michael can’t remember what had happened simply because he had not been there mentally.

This never happened again around Jared. When the two were together, everything was fine. They’d always hang around outside, usually in Michael’s backyard. Jared’s parents were always really self conscious about the way their house looked, always worried that it was too dirty. Always worried that Michael would run home and tell his mom. Always worried that Mrs. Jones would be so appalled with the state of Jared’s house that she would never allow the two boys to be friends any longer. What Jared’s parents didn’t count on was the fact that Mrs. Jones was so depressed that she didn’t exactly keep the house in tip top shape either.

That's another thing about Jared; his house actually was a dump. Both of his parents worked all the time and they rewarded themselves with beer and cigarettes. Later, they would complain about not having any money to buy food or pay bills, so they worked themselves to death, let everything pile up until everything was filthy. Jared did not bathe regularly, but he was one of the nicest boys Michael had ever met. He never did figure out why his friend always smelled bad, because his parents had to have paid the water bill at some point. It would be completely different if he only reeked part of the time, but Jared always smelled like unwashed clothes, sweat, and cigarette smoke.

When Jared and Michael went outside to play, they’d race through the neighborhood on their bikes. Jared had been the one to teach Michael how to ride without training wheels and since then, Michael’s butt has basically been glued to the bike seat. Other times, Jared would bring his GameBoy Color over and teach Michael how to play Pokemon. A lot of the time, all of the other neighborhood kids would come over. They would play baseball in the middle of the street, or race bikes. Sometimes, Jared’s older brother would bring out his football and teach everyone how to properly throw it.

They were not attached at the hip. Some days, they chose to stay indoors and keep to themselves, and that was completely okay. Michael watched a lot of television and played a lot of video games. He liked these things. His mom had her books and Michael had video games. He would play and play for hours until his mind was nothing but objectives and pixels. If someone came to talk to him, he would snap back to reality and he hated the feeling so much. Being sucked into a completely different world was fantastic, but it never lasted. Coming back was always inevitable. 

When Michael was in the third grade, things began to change little by little until the canvas of his life had been splattered with so many different shades of paint that he could barely recognize what it used to be. He met Lindsay Tuggey. Jared and Michael had been separated into two different classes this year. On Michael’s first day of third grade, his teacher sat him next to a red haired girl in a red t-shirt. He’s not sure how it happened. He had just assumed ages ago that nobody would want to be friends with the kid everyone made fun of for being fat, even though he knew he wasn't. 

Lindsay would doodle stick figures in the margins of her homework assignments and Michael would give them speech bubbles. They ate lunch together and played tag at recess and at the end of each day, Michael would walk down the hallway with Lindsay, weaving through the crowds and making their way out to the parking lot where their parents were waiting for them. 

The more time Michael spent with Lindsay, the less time he had for Jared. It made him sad. The thing about Jared, though, was that he wasn’t the most...likable kid in the third grade. Kids made fun of him for wearing the same pair of jeans twice in a row, or for smelling bad when it was just that his parents were, in fact, having issues paying the water bill. If Jared and Michael found time to play together at recess, Lindsay would give Michael a quizzical and calculating look.

“Why do you talk to him?” she had asked him once.

Michael just shrugs, figuring that he was already a target for wordslingers. Why add to it? “He talked to me first.”

“Tell him to go away.” Lindsay always talked as if everything was simple. 

“He wasn’t bothering me.”

“He’s such a loser, though.”

Michael just shrugged again. He'd seen stuff like that happen before, only ever unfolding before his eyes on a television screen. It was then that he realized just how shallow people could really be. He let it go, though.

After that, Michael got scared. He was scared of what everyone around him was thinking about him, so he tried to minimize the amount of ammunition that they had. He continued to avoid the first best friend he’d ever had in favor of remaining in a Social Safe Zone, even though people still called him fat and made fun of his glasses.

On his tenth birthday, his family threw him a small party. Lindsay was invited, and since she’s the only one Michael really cared about at the time, she was all Michael needed to have a good time. He remembers what his mother and grandparents had gotten for him: a personal CD player and some CD’s. He remembers thinking that it was all so lovely and perfect, and that was the second time he lost touch with the real world. This time had been slightly different.

As he stared down at his gifts, he couldn’t help but think that his family had spent far too much money on him. Far, far too much. His smile faltered, and he swore that he could feel the world surrounding him had fractured. All around him, people were talking. Grandparents speaking to aunts speaking to great grandparents speaking to Mother speaking to Lindsay while Michael disappeared again. 

He came back to the real world when his mother handed him an envelope with no return address and his father’s sloppy handwriting on it. He can’t remember most of what it had said, but he remembered that there had been an apology on the inside. “Sorry I couldn’t be there, Michael.” At least he cared enough to leave a trail of birthday cards.


	3. Calm Before The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back on it, Michael would say that he's always felt this way. He's always hurt himself and he's always been sad.
> 
> aka,
> 
> the author's way of telling the world about their life. This is the story of my life, told through the eyes of Michael Jones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the stuff that happens before everything turns sour.
> 
> I'm leaving a lot of real-life events out, mostly because I don't feel like writing about them, and also because I'm going to change up the way things play out. While this IS based off of my life, soon enough the chapters are going to be a reflection of what I wish had happened.

Life really got interesting when middle school began. He wasn’t just sitting around with the same old people for an entire school year. New routine. More classes. More people. Lockers. Friends. Confused boners. And, of course, girl drama.

Sixth grade was alright. There was a restaurant in town that sponsored dances for the kids. Lindsay dragged him to one in September where he met a girl called Barbara Dunkelman, one of Lindsay’s friends, who put an arm around his shoulders and told him they were all going to request the same Fall Out Boy so that the DJ absolutely had to play it.

Barbara was fierce as hell, always acting like she could handle anything life threw at her. She loved people, but if someone didn’t like her, she was quick to say that she didn’t give a fuck.

“If they’re mad at me and they can’t tell me why, then they don’t matter,” she had once told him.

Of course, there was that time he found Barb crying at the Christmas dance that very year. She’d walked out of the girls’ room. Michael had been looking for her.

“Barb?”

“Yeah, Michael?” She said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.

What’s wrong?” He pulled her aside, away from prying eyes.

“I’m okay.”

He wasn’t buying it. “You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s just…Fucking Taylor. She won’t talk to me.”

Taylor. Best friend. Right. “Why not? What happened?”

She shrugged. “She’s mad at me, I guess. I don’t know.”

That was the moment Michael realized that it had all been an act. Barb gave a fuck about what people thought of her.

Michael felt connected to her in a way.

 

People came and went once seventh grade came around. Teachers became more strict. Kids either became even more horrible or infinitely nicer. There was no in between.   At the end of every school day, Michael, Barbara, and Lindsay would walk home together. It was a half hour walk from the school to Michael’s house, and a twenty-five minute walk to both Lindsay and Barbara’s house. The two had lived on the same street for years without even speaking to one another.   At the end of East 19th Street, they would split up, Barbara heading North, Lindsay heading South, and Michael keeping straight.  

Seventh grade was simple. Boring, almost.  Michael felt as if everything was great, especially since he’d heard some of his friends’ older siblings talking about just how horrible junior high could be, but nothing had really happened.  Sure, kids still weren’t very nice to Michael. Cade and Kyle weren’t letting up on him.  Michael usually let it slide, because the boys weren’t very creative. They’d call him fat and accuse him of doing drugs.  He had no idea where the drug thing even came from, but it was so ridiculous that he never really worried about it, and he was so used to getting called “fat” at this point that it didn’t even phase him.

The worst part of the day was homeroom, which was a mix of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. The people from his grade were all really douchey and they rarely spoke to him.  Michael claimed the seat in the corner of the room as his own, away from everyone else. He’d read, sketch, do homework, or just simply stare off into space until the bell rang twenty minutes later. The day could really only get better from there.

At Lindsay’s birthday party that September, Michael met even more people, none of whom he got to really know, but most of which didn’t mind working with him if teachered decided to assign partner projects.  This was the year that Barbara and him had discovered amazing new music and YouTube stuff and him and Ray were playing video games together all the time.  Michael’s grades were good. Honor roll good, and his father had returned from wherever he had been for all those years (Arizona, apparently).  

At the very end of the year, his English teacher Mrs. Wilson held him after the final bell had rang. She wanted to speak with him.

“Michael, I really liked that poem you wrote,” she said, sitting on her desk in front of me.

“Uh, you did?”

“Yeah. Do you write in your free time?”

“Nah, never. I mean, I used to have a journal when I was like, seven.”

She nods. “I think you should start keeping a journal.  See if you like it.”

“O-okay.”

“Here,” she said as she dug through a pile of papers on the desk. “You should have this.”

Michael took the piece of paper that she handed to him, seeing that it was the poem he’d turned in last week.  “Thanks.”

“Keep it. It’s good.” And he knew that she didn’t mean that she wanted him to take the poem home. She meant for him to _keep_ it. Fold it and slip it into the front of a book or a notepad or hang it on the fridge at home. Keep it. Never lose it. “Now go home, Michael,” she smiled. “And have a good summer.”

Michael smiled back. “You too, ma’am.”

That night, Michael ransacked his bedroom for a mostly empty notebook that he knew he had.  Once he’d found it, one third filled with notes from math class, he opened it to the next blank page, put the pen to the paper, and began to write. Michael had never felt more content.  He took the poem he had written for class out of his bag, folded it in half, and placed it inside of the front cover.

**Permanent**

_Can’t take it back_

_Can’t make a scratch_

_Can’t reword the scripts_

_The only thing permanent_

_Is the past._

_Just wear the mask_

_And no one will ask_

_Why your lies and your story_

_Don’t match._

_You still remember_

_When everything switched_

_Hard phrases that were harder to catch_

_So you just kept turning pages_

_Finding events that are too hard to watch_

_Then you realize_

_The only thing constant in life_

_Is change_

_You can’t take it back_

_Can’t make a scratch_

_Can’t reword the scripts._

_The only thing permanent_

_**Is the past.** _


	4. Ups and Downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back on it, Michael would say that he's always felt this way. He's always hurt himself and he's always been sad.
> 
> aka,
> 
> the author's way of telling the world about their life. This is the story of my life, told through the eyes of Michael Jones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> setting up for the fun part, here.

The summer before eighth grade was good, too. Michael and his friends always went out for coffee, or took walks around town just because they could. Michael and Barbara were hanging out together. One on one. He even spent the night at her house a couple dozen times. She had a trundle bed with a mattress that was actually quite comfortable. Her room was in the basement, so her parents couldn’t hear them if they started laughing too loud. On more than one night, they fell asleep on the trampoline in her backyard. Michael really liked Barbara. The only problem was that Barbara herself didn’t really like Barbara.

Michael spent countless hours on the phone with Barbara as she cried, or vented her anger, or just talked to drown out the silence. She would call and Michael would listen. It was her parents. Her mom was a nurse and her dad had his own welding business, and neither of them were home very often. Barbara was left to fend for herself. She always said that she didn’t mind being home on her own. What she minded was how much she had on her plate. 

She had to do the dishes and the laundry every night, and she had to vacuum and mop the floors once a week. It was her responsibility to take care of her two dogs and her two cats. If she finished off a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs, she had to walk to the store to buy more before her parents got home. She grew up too fast, taking care of herself and everything around her, managing her own time at the age of thirteen. Her mom was diabetic, so she did everything in her power to prevent Barbara from becoming diabetic as well. She hired a personal trainer for Barbara and made sure that she wasn’t eating too much junk food. Michael didn’t think that she even drank soda unless they were at his house and his mother offered it to her. 

Barbara was stressed. She wanted everything to just stop for awhile, but none of it was in her control.

It was also around this time that Michael’s mother forgot to schedule an appointment for her yearly birth control shot. 

Depo-Provera: the thing that made it so Michael’s mom never got periods. She forgot to schedule an appointment. He remembers her being sick from it. She explained it to him, how she hadn’t had a period in over five years and how it felt as if somebody had their hands inside of her gut. She said that it felt as if everything was going to fall out of her. He really, really didn’t want to hear any of this, but he really, really wanted to make sure that she was okay at the same time. 

After that, she began to change. She lost forty pounds that year, bought new clothes, smiled a lot more, and talked like she had something to look forward to. Michael was so happy to finally have a mother who smiled like she meant it.

Michael started to tell her everything, and she listened. She never judged and she always had the best advice. It was almost as if they were both thirteen. His mom had this whole Honesty Thing. One day, he asked her what a prostitute was and her Honesty Thing kicked in.

“Somebody who sleeps with other people for money,” she’d told him. No sugar coating. No evil Mom Eye that said Where the hell did you learn that word? I want names and I never want you to speak with that person ever again. 

And that’s how Michael’s life seemed to play out--with Barbara’s downward spiral and his mother’s rise from depression. Two things. Completely opposite. Something to make Michael worry and something else to make him happy. There was never an in-between. 

On top of all of this, it seemed that Ray and Lindsay had become so close, that neither of them even thought to speak to Michael anymore. The two were attached at the hip and if Michael were being completely honest, he would say that it really pissed him off on a good day. But Michael wasn’t very honest when it came to things like this, and he was kind of doing the same thing with Barbara. 

Summer ended far too fast. Eighth grade was looming over them. Michael hadn’t been worried about it, but he really, really should have been.


	5. Dominoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking back on it, Michael would say that he's always felt this way. He's always hurt himself and he's always been sad.
> 
> aka,
> 
> the author's way of telling the world about their life. This is the story of my life, told through the eyes of Michael Jones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter. Journal entry is really from my journal and everything that happened in this chapter happened when I was thirteen. Chase is a real person and I never did figure out what actually fucking happened that night.

Dominoes. That’s what had happened.

On the very first day of their eighth grade year when Michael and his mom picked Barb up from her house, it was already almost seventy degrees outside. Michael didn’t feel like asking Barb why she was wearing her plaid jacket. It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d seen her in.

Later that day in his social studies class, Ray asked him a very strange and unsettling question.

“Is Barb cutting herself?” he asked, quiet enough so no one around them would hear, but loud enough to shake the ground under Michael’s feet.

Michael knew all about that. He’d read a book about a girl who had been put in a psychiatric hospital for cutting herself. The mere thought of Barb slicing her skin open was absurd to Michael. “Who the fuck told you that, Ray?”

“Lindsay has gym with her. She said she saw her arms in the locker room.”

“Why would Barb do that?”

Ray shrugged. “Why wouldn’t she?”

And that was it. That was the question that cemented the idea into Michael’s brain. Why wouldn’t Barb do something like that?

After the bell rang and Michael met Barb in the hallway, he glanced down at her sleeves, unsure of what to even look for. And when they met up again for lunch, he waited for her sleeves to slip down just enough to see if what Lindsay said was true. And when the day was over, and they were all piled into his mom’s minivan because it was too hot to walk home, Michael couldn’t even think of a way to bring it up.

So he never brought it up.

Eighth grade started out just like the seventh grade had: with Michael at the back of the room during homeroom and the rest of the kids ignoring him. Brady Thompson talked to Adam Gocke and Gavin Free and Bree Williams and Seth Mallor threw pens at Kerry Shawcross and everybody made sure that Payne Ackerman felt like an outcast (mostly because he smelled like actual, honest to God asshole, but also because he was an actual, honest to God asshole), and not one of them acknowledged Michael’s existence.

He had someone to talk to in every class, except for gym class. There was another girl, Katie, who didn’t have anyone in that class either. They agreed to partner up so they wouldn’t have to deal with the rest of their dumbass classmates.

He didn’t have any classes with anybody from his homeroom, and he only had one class with Barb, but he had two classes with Ray and one with Lindsay. There were only three other kids in his study hall class and he really liked all of them. His classes weren’t all that bad.

A week into the new school year, Barbara told Michael that their favorite band was going to be in concert. She told him that she’d buy his tickets, and he said he’d try to get his mom to take them, since she was infinitely better than Barb’s mom. On the same night, she came out to him.

 

Barb

_Have you ever had a secret so big that you almost couldn’t keep it in?_

__

Michael

_No? I don’t think so._

__

Barb

_Oh…never mind._

__

Michael.

_What’s up, Barb?_

__

Barb

_Don’t worry about it. I’m going to bed._

__

Michael

_Okay. Love you, Barbara._

__

And it was so late at night that it was almost as if they were the only two people in existence. Barbara, a few blocks away in bed, and Michael, laying in the dark with his phone resting on his chest. He could hear his brother breathing from his bed at the other side of the room and he wished that he was listening to Barb’s breathing instead. It wasn’t that he was romantically attracted to her, it was that he loved her company. Some nights, all he ever wanted was for her to wrap herself around him and make him forget about everything. Tonight was one of those nights.

His phone vibrated.

Barb

_I think I might be bisexual. Okay. There. I said it. Now i’m gonna go hide in a fucking corner._

__

Oh. _Oh_. Shit.

He messaged her back.

Michael.

_Is that it? I mean I can’t say that I’m surprised. And I totally don’t care who you like._

__

He couldn’t stop smiling. They were going to see their favorite band live and his best friend trusted him with a secret that she couldn’t seem to hold on her own.

Barb

_thank fucking christ, i wasn’t sure how you’d react._

__

Michael

_you’re still the same Barb I knew two minutes ago :)_

__**  
  
**

Michael wanted to say that Barbara was the first domino, but to be honest, Barbara had her name on a lot of his dominoes. This just so happened to be the first one.

Domino #1: Barbara Dunkelman lures Michael Jones deeper into her life with a secret.

 

A few weeks later, she met a boy. He was eighteen. Five years older than her. Definitely not good enough for her.

“His name’s Chase. Oh God, Michael, he’s so amazing,” she gushed to him one night on the phone.

“Barb, he’s also eighteen.” He had been doing homework. Something for their pre algebra class. He didn’t want to do it, so he listened to Barb ramble on and on about fucking Chase.

“Age is just a number, you know. My parents are six years apart in age,” she defends. “You can’t help who you fall in love with.”

And the thing is that Michael has read the books and the online journal updates and he’s seen all the movies. People talk about their first love like it was the dumbest part of their entire existence. There had to be a reason for that. “You’re still young, Barb.”

“God, you sound like my brother. He said the same thing.”

“Maybe your brother’s right. We’re thirteen, almost fourteen. We probably shouldn’t be talking about love.”

“Love doesn’t have age limitations, dumbass.” She was getting irritated.

Michael sighed. “I guess I don’t know him well enough.”

“You’ll have to meet him sometime. He’ll be here this weekend.”

Except Michael never met Chase.  Barb decided that she wanted to hang out with the guy one on one, which Michael was almost thankful for (he’d never been good at playing the third wheel). He heard stories over the phone and Barbara had canceled on him twice to hang out with Chase. Quite frankly, he didn’t want to meet the guy. He wanted Chase to leave Barb alone because Barb was too good, too young, and too much for him. Hearing Barb talk about Chase made him angry. He’d sat through countless hours of Barb’s angry ranting in the past. The fact that she was “in love” with a boy who was so much older than her just made it seem as if she were setting herself up for the pain in the end. It was never going to work out, Michael could see it.

And Michael was right.

He wrote it down in his journal, a book with a black hardcover and a lovely white ribbon to mark his next blank page, when it happened. He hadn’t written about Barb and Chase yet. The subject just put him on edge, but that night, he wrote it down.

His phone rang a little after eleven o’clock on a Monday night, blaring “The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You” by My Chemical Romance. The caller ID said Barb and he tried to smiled when he answered.

“Michael,” she’d sobbed down the line.

“Barb? Hey,” Michael tried. He’d been sitting on his bed with his notebook open, writing a poem about stupid friends with stupid crushes when said stupid friend had called him crying, and if she was crying about her stupid crush, Michael was going to kill him. “What’s wrong?”

“Chase is going to kill himself,” she got out before dissolving into the most violent sobs he had ever heard in his entire life. “Michael, he won’t answer his phone.”

Michael was lost in that moment, unable to say or do anything to help, because he’d never met Chase, and he couldn’t tell her that it would all be okay, because for all he knew, everything would not be okay. Everything could fall apart and become dust in the wind, and maybe Michael would get what he wanted. Maybe Chase would finally leave Barb alone.

No, he thought. Wrong train of thought.

“Call him again?”

“He’s not answering!” she yelled.

Oh God. “Try again.”

She went silent for a moment. And then, “He’s texting me.”

She hung up.

Michael dropped his phone, closed his eyes, threw his notebook to the side, and buried his face in the pillow he’d had propped on his knees.  He thanked whatever higher power there was that Jimmy was in the shower and not sitting right across the room from him at that moment, because this was embarrassing. There wasn’t enough air in his lungs, but he couldn’t take a deep enough breath to fix the problem. His hands made shaky fists in the fabric of his blue pillowcase and he let himself cry for a single minute before sucking it up and grabbing his journal from the space between his mattress and headboard.

_September 9, 2008_

_Something happened. I don’t know what. Chase is going to do something stupid. Barb called me crying, but she hung up when she got another text from him. Gotta go. She might call back._

__

Michael wasn't sure whose domino that was. He always thought that maybe both Barb’s and Chase’s names were on it.

Domino #2: Barbara and Chase give Michael his first anxiety attack.

When Barb called Michael back, he wished she was still crying. She spoke in the most hopeless tone and he could tell that she was exhausted.

“Did you talk to him?” Michael asked.

“I tried,” she replied. “But he told me to stop calling him.”

“What?”

“I think he lied about killing himself.”

What the fuck? “Why would he do that?”

She shrugged. Michael knew it without seeing it. “I don’t know. I called him and when he answered, he just yelled at me to leave him the fuck alone.”

“Barb--”

“And he says he never wants to talk to me again.”

Michael could say that the silence was deafening, but it was more than deafening. It was all-consuming--eating away at the deepest parts of him. It was suffocating--pressing all the air from his lungs for the second time that night. And yes, it was deafening, almost twice as loud as when Barbara’s violent sobs were travelling down the line. He wanted to say a lot of things.

Hey Barb, you’re too good for him anyway.

Don’t worry, sweetheart. He doesn’t deserve your time.

The guy’s a fucking moron, Barb, forget him.

But he knew that she didn’t want to believe it. She wanted Chase to like her as much as she liked him.

And what the fuck was he trying to prove anyway? Faking a suicide to get her to leave him alone? Or was it more than that? Was he pushing her away to make it easier on her when he did off himself?

“I’m going to go,” Barb said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Michael.”

He sighed. A strange mixture of relief and worry and anger churned in his gut until he was sick to his stomach. “Okay,” he said. “I love you, Barbara.”

“I love you too.”

He hung up.

Michael woke up the next morning to a text from Barb that said she was going to stay home from school. He asked her if she was okay.

Barb

_Not really. Didn’t sleep at all. Told my mom I had a headache and she called me in sick._

__

Michael

_:( ok. I’ll pick up your homework. try to sleep a little_

__

Barb

_thanks. and i don’t know if i can._

__

Michael

_just try_

__

And just to be safe, he sent a second text message.

_and don’t do anything stupid._

__

There was a strange feeling blooming in his chest, a warmth, a need, a...something.  He latched onto it and let the determination course through his veins.

His phone vibrated.

 

Barb

_no promises._

__

Protective. Michael felt protective.

So he went through that school day, biting his nails bloody, collecting Barb’s homework and feeling useless and helpless and worthless. Just less in general. Michael was feeling Less.

He ended up spilling all of this to Sam, one of the girls in his study hall, who wasn’t really friends with Barb or Lindsay or Ray, but she also wasn’t friends with idiots like Brady Thompson or Adam Gocke. Michael really liked her.

“I just...that boy she met? He did something dumb last night. And he doesn’t want to talk to her anymore, and I’m afraid she’s going to do something stupid.” Michael showed her the text messages. Michael’s request and Barb telling him she wouldn’t promise, telling him not to hold his breath. Sam reached across the table and grabbed Michael’s hand. He wasn’t going to cry. He was not going to cry. Not here in school. Not in front of Sam. He pulled his hand away so he could hide them under the table as he tore at the skin next to his thumb nails.

He felt it, then. Fucking heartbreak. It’s not just a metaphorical feeling, it’s just a different kind of pain and Michael was feeling it. He wanted his body to crumble to pieces, because the broken pieces of Michael Jones wouldn’t have to deal with the rest of the school day or Chase or these feelings or the blood that was steadily gushing from the edge of his thumb nail.

Domino #3: Barb breaks Michael’s heart for the first time.

 

He hops into his mom’s minivan at the end of the day. “I’ve got to give Barb her homework.”

And of course, he’d told her everything as well. She listened and listened and listened until he was done. She asked him if she needed to call Barb’s parents, and Michael told her that it might not be such a good idea. Not yet, at least. Barb had been replying to his texts during seventh period. She was fine.

For the most part.

When Michael walked through the front door of her house, it was to Barb lying on her living room floor, wrapped in her pink duvet, hair a mess, no make-up, television on mute, phone in hand. “So earlier, somebody told me that Chase was dead.”

“Oh,” was Michael’s lame reply.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “But get this. His phone’s still on, and either he posted a music video on his Facebook or someone logged on as him and posted his favorite Armor For Sleep song an hour ago. I think he’s fine.”

“I think he’s a moron,” Michael confessed. He was so angry.

“I know you do, but I still love him.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

She nodded. “I’m just going to make something to eat and go to bed.”

“If you need anything, just call.”

She gave him a small smile. “I will.”

And he left. Twice as angry and twice as Less because Chase was an idiot and Barb was an even bigger idiot, but Michael would stand behind her one hundred per cent. He thought a lot about Chase that night. About what he’d said to Taylor. About how if he didn’t like her, all he had to do was say so. All he had to do was stop talking to her, but he led her on, and about how instead, he said he was going to off himself.

None of it made sense.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.


	6. As Solid as Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been awhile. I've had most of this chapter typed up ages ago, but I couldn't finish it, so I changed it up a little and now it's kind of..vague, I guess. I didn't go into as much detail, but I think I like it better this way. Again, all of this really happened. The journal entry and poem are mine. Austin is a real person.

On the fifteenth of September, Michael was still exhausted. He still had the thought of Barbara and Chase fresh in his head and he was still angry. Chase had messaged Barb and told her that one of his friends had stole his phone and sent her those texts. She brought up the fact that it had definitely been him who answered the phone when she’d called that last time. She was confused. Chase apologized, and she accepted it, but she didn’t want to see him anymore.

Michael found out by way of phone call the previous night.

“I don’t think he hates me,” she said after explaining the whole thing to Michael. “I just think he wants space.”

Michael sighed. He was trying to find the words, but it wasn’t happening. His mind was trying to pull him under again. Eat all of his thoughts and his energy. He was going to lose his sight and stare at a wall for three hours and he wasn’t going to move a single muscle. Thoughts were going to slowly sink and rise in the ocean of his brain and the waves were going to beat against the walls of cognitive caves. He didn’t know when it was going to happen, but it was definitely going to happen. He was going to disappear again.

Silence suffocates them both, Barbara not wanting to say anything and Michael not knowing what to tell her.

“I just,” she began. “I don’t know.” She sounded exhausted. She sounded done. Almost as if she were--

He had his eyes closed as he spoke. “I don’t understand. He said he was going to kill himself--”

“He did.”

“--and then he said that he never wanted to speak to you again. But then days later, he tells you that it wasn’t him, but one of his dickhead frends. And now he’s sorry? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes it does. He wanted me to leave him alone. He wanted to get as far away from me as possible, but he’s fucked up, too, you know? Michael. I’m not what he thought I was.”

Dead.  Almost as if she were dead.

“He’s stupid.”

“Michael, no.”

“He is, though.”

“I’m really tired, Michael.”

He sighed. “Okay.”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Okay,” he said, defeated. “I love you.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Love you too.”

 

When Barb hung up, Michael kept the phone pressed to his ear. The lost connection sounded exactly like the silence in his room, but the one coming from his phone was different. That’s where Barbara used to be. Michael thought about the impact Barb had had on his life so far. He looked at it as if it were a crater. People come crash landing into other people’s lives all the time. Michael imagined what it would be like if Barbara left the crater. He imagined what life would be like if Barbara left. If she decided that this wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He imagined his life without her and he imagined himself a year or two down the road, looking back on it, and thinking, that’s where Barbara used to be. He wondered what her headstone would look like and he wondered how many kids from school would cry and he wondered what he would do without her.

He kept thinking and thinking all of the most depressing thoughts, feeling the most horrible things and watching the worst case scenarios in his head. He didn’t realize that he’d been staring at the ceiling until his brother flipped the light switch off.

The time on his phone read half past midnight, but his call with Barb had ended at a quarter to eleven.

He had disappeared.

The very next day, Michael had an ordinary day. He did ordinary things and spoke to all of his ordinary friends. Barbara seemed okay, even though it was obvious to Michael that she was pretending. Michael decided that he could pretend, too. After school he came home. He checked his Twitter and he talked to Ray. He ate dinner with his family at six o’clock. He started his homework at half past seven o’clock.  He went to take a shower at nine o’clock. At two minutes after nine, he received a picture message from Barbara, so he downloaded it.

And he instantly wished he hadn’t.

One long, vertical cut, from wrist to elbow. Blood everywhere. He couldn’t recognize her arm, but he recognized her bathroom floor. The caption read “I think it’s pretty.”

Hot rage built up inside of Michael and he felt the sting of tears in his eyes.  He did not know what to do. Anger built up so high inside of him that it hid any protectiveness he had inside of him. He forgot how to be rational. How do I care? he thought.

He typed out a quick text.

_You have to stop, Barbara._

He held his phone for five seconds before throwing it against the opposite wall. After rubbing his eyes so hard that he began to see every color in existence, he took a deep breath. Frustration. Fear. Helplessness. His phone had turned off on impact. He didn’t care. He showered, went on with his night, and didn’t turn it on again until right before he went to bed and after writing in his journal.  

__

_September 16th, 2008_

_Barbara sent me a picture of her arm. One long cut from wrist to elbow. There was so much blood and it made me really angry. I threw my phone against a wall and the screen went black. I don’t think I broke it, but I’m scared to see her reply._

__

Two texts from Barbara.

_I can’t_

_You don’t fucking understand._

And no, he didn’t. So he told her as much, and she never replied, and Michael didn’t sleep very well that night.

****  
  


The next day was almost harder than the day after the whole Chase thing, because Barbara still carpooled with Michael on the way to school, but she just pretended that she’d never sent him that picture the night before. Michael sighed. All he really wanted to do was keep her by his side, make sure she didn’t do anything reckless and stupid and irrational, but she didn’t even want to help herself.

He kept himself numb for most of the day, except for when he was in study hall with nothing to do but think.  He tried to write, but the only thing he could think about was how scared he was, how sad and angry and helpless he felt. So he began to write about it.

He felt it then, in his chest, like a pressure. He pushed it down and he tried to keep writing.  It wasn’t working at that point. Writing it down wasn’t burying that feeling. Michael had touched the thought of Barbara in his head, red hot and fresh and raw and absolutely horrible.  Pain, hot and heavy in his chest. So overwhelming that he had to put his pen down. He was feeling that broken feeling again.

_September 17th, 2008_

_I fell asleep with the verse_

_“The truth hurts the worst”_

_On the tip of my tongue_

_And I woke up_

_With it burned into my skin._

_Well apparently_

_The punchline to this joke is saying_

_I love you_

_Because it never meant a thing to begin with_

_And all this will come to_

_Is a kiss from a switch blade_

_That bites at the heart_

_Endless repose_

_And with you leaving home_

_But you’ll never have known_

_I can’t save you now_

_And I won’t tell a soul_

_Because I don’t know how._

__****  
  


“What are you writing?”

Michael’s hand flew to cover the words on the page and his head shot up to look at the stranger who was standing above him.

“Nothing,” he automatically answered.

“Doesn’t look like nothing.”

He had bright blue eyes, crystal clear and curious.  His dirty blonde hair hung in his eyes and his lips were set in a half smile.

“It’s nothing.”

The boy put his hands up in the air, signalling surrender. “Alright, I’ll back off.  Just a little bored. Thought I’d bother somebody.”

“Go bother somebody else.”

“Can’t. There’s no one else in here.”

Michael looked around and found that the boy had been right.  It was just the two of them and the study hall supervisor.

“Where did they go?”

“Library, I guess.”

“Nerds.”

“Right?”

It was silent for a beat, and then the boy spoke again. “Actually, I was wondering if you would help me study for a test.  I can remember things better if someone’s like, quizzing me.”

Michael wasn’t used to this, being spoken to like he was a normal human being. If he had said no, he would be right back where he started, sitting in a mostly empty classroom with his journal open and a pain in his chest.

“Yeah, sure.”

The boy smiled then. “Thank you so much. I’m Austin by the way.”

He smiled back. “Michael.”

And that’s how he ended up reading off test questions about wood shop to a complete stranger.  That’s how he distracted himself from what was going on in real life. And that’s how his entire world was flipped completely upside down.

 

Domino #4: Michael meets Austin.

When you hate everyone you go to school with, it becomes really easy to not know who anybody is. You walk in, sit down, try to listen, get out, and repeat. Michael never once paid any attention to who was in his classes if he wasn’t already friends with them. After that day in study hall, Michael found that he had four classes with Austin. English, art, study hall, and pre-algebra.  

By the end of October, the two were talking on a daily basis.  In art class, Austin would save Michael a seat. They’d talk about music and video games and life as a whole, and when art class ended, they’d walk to pre algebra together, where Ray and Lindsay were saving Michael a seat. Luckily, there was always an empty seat somewhere nearby, so Austin and Michael could still talk.

October 17th, the day before Barb and Michael’s concert, he let Austin borrow his favorite album.

“I’m going to be honest,” Austin began. “I’ve only heard one song by Panic! At The Disco, so I might not like this.” He put the CD in the front pocket of his bookbag.

“I don’t expect you to love it, dude,” Michael told him. “You said something about borrowing it. Just get it back to me in one piece, yeah?”

He smiled. “No promises. I might decide that I hate it and I might throw it under a bus.”

The next day, Barbara and Michael were sat in the back of his mom’s minivan. They were both wearing the same shirt and matching jeans. The radio was playing in the background while his mom and her friend talked in the front seat. They were not listening.

“You talk to Austin an awful lot,” Barb pointed out.

Michael just shrugged. “Yeah well, he’s pretty cool.”

“Is he?”

“Why, do you not like him?”

“I don’t know him well enough, to be fair, but no. I don’t. Not really.”

“Why not?” Michael was annoyed, but he wasn’t going to let it show. Not when they were both going to see their favorite band live in a few hours. Not when Michael was trying to keep Barbara close.

“He seems arrogant.”

“It’s an act. Dude’s fucking great when you get him by himself.”

“You can do better than him,” Barb said.

Michael shifted his gaze, from watching the road outside the window to Barb in the seat next to him. Her eyes were completely honest. Michael wasn’t even going to ask how she’d caught on.

“Could I though?”

“Of course you could.”

It seemed strange to Michael. Just a month before, he’d been telling her the same exact thing about Chase. Barbara always replied as if she didn’t believe Michael when he’d said it to her, and now she was trying to tell him that Austin wasn’t good enough. Michael almost thought that she was putting him and Chase in the same boat. The thought was irrational, but it was there.

Michael wanted to say, “Barb, there is no way Austin will hurt me in the same way Chase hurt you.”

He wanted to say, “I’ll do better if you do better.”

He wanted to say, “You don’t know Austin.”

Instead, he said nothing.

 **  
**Lindsay and Ray were holding their spot in line, somewhere close to the front, and when the doors opened up, they ran for the front of the crowd and held on tight to the barrier. Security guards glared and bodies pressed in close. **  
**

Bands played. Songs he’d never heard and brand new beats shook his body to the core. There was one massive speaker mere feet away from them and he could feel the sound vibrating his bones and melting his brain. Lindsay held onto his hand and Ray had a hand on his shoulder. When the lead singer of one of the bands jumped down to shake everyone’s hands, Michael’s ribs got crushed on the metal bar of the barrier. Ray was pressed in so close that he was positive that they were going to become the same person. Lindsay and Barb were laughing.

When their band’s set began, Michael forgot. He forgot everything except for the press of bodies, his three best friends, and the feeling of sound. He smiled wider than he had all year and he sang every word at the top of his lungs while he made crappy videos on his flip phone to watch later. Everyone around him was happy.

He was happy.

The air was filthy with energy and noise. He could feel it on his skin and in his head and in his heart. It was surreal in the best way, like walking in a dream and not waking up right away. So when the show ended, it was like crashing down. Reality came back all at once, but Lindsay was smiling and she was still holding his hand.

They waited in line for t-shirts for the better part of an hour and when they finally made it outside, the cool autumn air felt electric on their skin. Ray tackled him and laughed in his ear. Barb laughed so hard that she had tears in her eyes. Lindsay hugged everyone.

 **  
**For the first time in months, everything felt fine.


	7. Breaking Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Michael is done with everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I broke my laptop so im posting from my phone. this chapter was done yesterday and thats the only reason im able to update. not sure when the next chapter will be out, but i started that yesterday as well so no worries.
> 
> i dunno if gavin will make an appearance in this set of chapters. i decided to make this the backstory, so like, when i make the second part it will be more mavin-y, i promise. the only reason gavin isnt here is because the person im writing him after wasnt in my life until muuucch later.
> 
> and again, all of this really happened to me irl. 
> 
> i would really like to hear what you guys think of this story so far. should i continue? should i just stop? let me know :)

Decemberisms.

Skeletal trees with fingers that reach for the sunless, gray skies. Snow that hits the ground in eerie silence. Freezing air and howling, biting wind. Dreary days and fast nights. Soundless evenings. Everything seemed so dead. Michael was not a fan of December and all the things it brought.

And December brought a lot of things.

December was that time Austin and Michael exchanged numbers so that they could text each other well into the night. Sometimes Austin would talk to him about how stressful school was. Michael would talk right back. All about how he’d rather curl up in a ball and die than take another day of maths.

Austin talked a lot about his father moved out several years ago. He talked about how his mother seemed to pay more attention to his sister, who was only five years old. He talked about sneaking out to take walks in he middle of the night because his mother never noticed when he wasn’t around. He told Michael a thousand times about how he felt about life. It seemed pointless to Austin because smiling was too difficult. Michael didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything at all when Austin started talking like that.

December was when Austin announced that he would be moving in May.

They were working on clay sculptures in art class. Austin would grab his and Michael’s projects from the shelf while Michael gathered tools for the two of them.

“I’m moving in with my dad soon,” Austin said.    

Michael pulled the plastic sack off the top of his lopsided sculpture of a dog. “Is that a good thing?”

“Not sure yet.” He was working on the wheels of his clay sports car. “I mean, I think it will be.”

“Where’s your dad live?” Michael was running his fingers over the clay hood, attempting to look busy. His body was on autopilot.

“About a hundred miles East of here. In the city.” Austin said it like it wasn’t a big deal. Like he hadn’t caused Michael’s world to spin out of control momentarily. It seemed a little silly, even at the time, but he felt as if his world was ending.

It was December in his veins, ice down the back of his shirt, water on his head, howling wind in his bones. A bombshell at its finest. They were young enough that a hundred miles might as well have been on the other side of the planet. Michael couldn’t make words come out.

“I’ll miss my sister and my mom, but I kind of want a fresh start.”

He cleared his throat. “A fresh start’s always good.”

Michael started counting days. There were a lot of days between that moment and the very last day of school, but the thing about days was that they never lasted long enough. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about losing his best friend, so he changed the subject.

****  
  


That night, Ray listened to him vent over the phone. He listened to Michael talk about the days left and the distance and about how much it sucked. And Michael listened as Ray explained why Austin wasn’t good enough. He listened as Ray insisted that he’d be better off without Austin around.  “You can do better than him, Michael. Lindsay and I were talking and--”

That’s when Michael stopped listening.

When he hung up the phone, he pulled his journal out of its hiding spot and wrote everything down instead. It was his safest place. He could talk and talk about Austin and nobody would tell him that he was wrong for calling him one of his best friends.

If friends are floorboards, Michael wrote. Then Austin was always a trapdoor.

A hundred miles between us. I’m trying to be happy for him, but it just isn’t happening.

December was when Ray and Lindsay seemed to forget that he existed.

There were two separate lunch hours. Ray and Lindsay were in the first one while Michael and Barbara were in the other.

In maths, Ray would invite Lindsay over for game nights, where they’d have pizza and fall asleep on the living room floor, and Lindsay would plan bonfire nights in her backyard, when they’d throw their old homework into the flames and roast marshmallows together. Michael was never invited.

Eventually, he just accepted that fact. Lindsay and Ray didn’t want him around.

They would text him at midnight and tell him about funny conversations they were having. They’d tell him all about what they did that night. They’d talk about how late they were going to attempt to stay up. Michael would be at home in his bed, journal open in his lap, music turned up all the way. He wasn’t sure if they realized just how left out he felt. Every text got read, but Michael never replied to them. As far as they knew, he was asleep.

December brought on a strange sadness.

He talked less in December. He wasn’t sure why. There was just no need to waste the energy. Getting out of bed was hard when Winter was holding him down. His head felt foggy, and it was as if he was watching the world through a gray film. The world had no color or emotion. Everything was monochrome and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. Living turned into existing and he turned into a shadow.

The sadness felt comfortable and familiar in a way that he didn’t know how to explain, so he kept it to himself. He disappeared a lot in December, his mind wandering for what felt like mere seconds, but he always found that he’d lost clusters of time doing absolutely nothing.

Mindless. Stuck. Locked.

Gone.

Some days, he felt as if breathing took a conscious effort. He had to force himself to do it. Some days, his limbs would stick in place and he wouldn’t feel like moving for hours. Some days, his head would tell him that it wasn’t worth it.

Things seemed dreary all the time.

And on top of that, he was anxious. There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t freak out about going to school. The inside of his mouth had been worried raw from where his teeth had been pressing down. The taste of blood became familiar as he broke through skin on a daily basis.

The edges of his fingernails were no better. Scabs and indents from where his nails had dug in or from where his teeth had tore or from here he’d bit the nail down too far. He picked at his cuticles all day and before he even realized what he was doing, his fingers would be covered in blood.

Michael just figured that it would pass.

 

December was Christmas at the nursing home because his great grandmother couldn’t get out of bed.

His cousin Sara bought dozens of boxes of chocolate covered cherries. She called in and spoke with the nurses about patients with no families and they gave her a list of people. Michael, David, Jimmy, and Sara went from room to room. They delivered chocolate covered cherries to people who were completely alone.

Michael saw the world in color in that moment.

Gifts were exchanged between family members. His great grandmother had purchased three Wii consoles for her three different groups of great grandchildren.  Dinner was had. The nursing home was dismal, but the thought of Christmas made it easier for Michael to forget where he was. To forget about December.

 

And December was bad news.

December was bad, bad news.

Two days after Christmas day, Barbara and her mom picked up Michael and they all went into the city to go shopping. Michael had never really enjoyed the mall, but he went along anyway because Barb had invited him.

He stood in front of the same t-shirt rack for ten minutes before finally deciding to pick one up. It wasn’t anything special--just a black shirt, size large, seemed comfortable enough.. In the check-out lane when he had a pair of fingerless gloves along with his shirt and Barb was ready to purchase a sweater and a pair of fingerless gloves as well, she pointed to the shirt in Michael’s hands and said it.

“Why do you need one so big?”

Michael just shrugged. When he got to the counter, he told the cashier that he didn’t really want the shirt after all.

The next shop they went into was for Barb’s own enjoyment. This place sold dresses for all occasions and she tried them on for fun. That was when Michael noticed. Three dresses in, and he finally saw it.

Michael noticed the ribcage protruding, a deadly prison. He noticed the concave stomach and the sharp hipbones. He noticed that Barb had been swimming in the size two dress. He noticed the tiny wrists and the collarbones and the thigh gap and the rusty joints and the hollow bones. It didn’t take a genius to see what she was doing to herself.

She was a skeleton with scars like tattoos.

December sucked.

However, December was when his mother decided to be more involved in his life. She asked rhim about school, about life, about girls. Michael told her about Austin. She reacted the same way she would have if he had told her that he liked Lindsay. He told her about Barb. About her cutting and her starving. He told her about Ray and Lindsay.

Michael and his mom finished three seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, two gallons of ice cream, and dozens of frozen pizzas over Christmas break.

When school started back up, Barbara met Kara.

Kara was tiny and cute and random and head over heels in love with Barbara in a way that only a fourteen year old girl can be. Michael liked her, for the most part.

He knew that Barb had messaged her and asked her out a few weeks into January. They walked to a nearby park and they hung out on the swings for a few hours. That night, Kara called her up and they talked until Barb fell asleep with the phone pressed to her ear. When she woke up in the morning, her phone was dead. Michael remembered her smile that morning in the car on their way to school.

At the end of that week, Kara asked Barb to come to her house to sleep over for the night. Michael got the play-by-play the next day. Kara broke out a bottle of whiskey that her friend had bought for her. They put in a movie, but they weren’t paying attention to it. Too busy talking. Halfway through it and after a quarter of the bottle of whiskey, Kara kissed her for the first time.

Michael felt out of place in the conversation.

Barbara. Girlfriend. Relationship. Kissing. Drinking.

A whole new life.

Ray didn’t like Kara.

Michael found out why when he was staying over one Friday night in mid-January.  Lindsay had a wedding to attend that weekend. Michael was the second choice.

The last resort.

They were going to order a pizza and play video games, but Ray’s mother wanted him to finish up his chores first. Michael was sprawled out on his bed.

“I just...I don’t know. She seems fake,” Ray explained as he folded his laundry.

Michael was staring up at the ceiling. “How so?”

“She just seems...I guess calculated is the word I’m looking for,” he said. “She doesn’t act like a real person. Whatever happened to that Chase guy she liked?”

Michael sat up. “What do you mean?”

Ray shoved three pairs of jeans into a drawer all at once, and then acted surprised when he couldn’t get it to shut. “You remember him, right? Wasn’t that long ago.”

“Yeah, no. I remember that piece of shit.”

“Oh, come on.” Ray got the drawer closed. “He wasn’t that bad.”

Michael said nothing. This wasn’t happening. Ray wasn’t saying these things because Ray wasn’t stupid. Michael wasn’t going to have to explain everything to him because Ray wasn’t stupid.

And when Michael didn’t respond for a few seconds, Ray turned to him and asked him what was up.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Michael spat. “Chase? That guy her brother hung out with?”

“What’s wrong with Chase?”

“You mean nobody told you about all of that bullshit that went down? I’m sure Lindsay heard at least some of it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He did it. He explained the entire thing to Ray because apparently, Ray didn’t know about any of it. Michael told him about the phone calls about how Chase said he was going to kill himself and about how Michael was scared Barb would kill herself if Chase went through with it.

“Are you sure Barb didn’t just exaggerate that? None of that makes sense.”

“Why would she call me up crying at eleven o’clock at night with a story like that?”

“Attention?”

Anger flared up inside of his gut. He was done. “That doesn’t mean Chase isn’t a piece of shit. Dude’s bad news and he really fucking messed with Barb. Not to mention it’s pretty much illegal for him and Barb to even lock lips.”

“Okay,” Ray threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine, you’re right. Chase isn’t any better, but I still don’t like Kara.”

Days fell apart like daisies in a hurricane. Time was slipping between Michael’s fingers and there was nothing he could do about it. February was uneventful. Nothing changed. Michael stopped making daily entries in his diary. He was tired of talking about Austin leaving and Barb cutting and starving and Ray and Lindsay forgetting about him. Everything was exactly the same.

March was the breaking point.

That was when he took a hammer to a pencil sharpener when he was left home alone one day.

At first, he just stared at it. Tiny. Light reflecting from the lamp above his bed and into his eyes like a threat, or maybe a promise. He never did anything that first night.

Or the second.

Or the third.

On the fourth night, he wondered what the point of not doing it would be, especially since the only person who seemed to care wasn’t going to be around for much longer.

On the fifth night, he tried to tell himself that yes, his friends did care. He decided that talking to his mom about this would break her heart, so letting her know about what was going through his head was not going to happen.

On the sixth night, he could only think about how Ray and Lindsay cared about each other; about how Barbara couldn’t care about anyone else since she was hurting everyone around her with her habits; about how Austin couldn’t save him from a city a hundred miles away.

On the seventh night, Michael attended a talent show. His brothers were in the choir. Lindsay and Ray were in the band. They told Michael that they’d save him a seat next to them, but they never did. He sat with his mom at the back of the auditorium.

When the show ended, Michael found Lindsay. He told her she was good. He hugged her. She smiled. Ray tackled him into a wall and they all laughed.

“Linds, we gotta go. My mom’s out in the car waiting for us,” Ray explained.

“Crap,” she said. “Sorry Michael. We’re going to jet. Ray and I are having a bonfire.”

Michael’s heart clenched and his blood boiled and the world lost color all at once.  He felt as if he needed to leave, so that’s what he did. “Alright, bye guys,” was all he said before he bolted. He found his brothers and his mother and they left. On their way home, they drove alongside Mrs. Narvaez’s minivan. Ray and Lindsay waved at him from the backseat. He attempted to seem excited when he waved back, but in his head, he was only thinking of one thing.

If they really liked me, they would’ve invited me tonight, last time, the time before that, or the time before that or last month--

They arrived home. Michael went straight to his room. The razor was hidden under the journal that he hadn’t touched since January. Nobody was around to stop him and he didn’t even think twice about it.

Pressing the metal to his skin felt like resolution. It felt like a good idea. It felt like the answer to his everything. At first, he was disappointed. How hard did he have to press to draw blood?

So he tried again. And that time, there was a different type of sting in his skin and a trickle of blood down the side of his wrist.

He smiled to himself.

Because now he understood.


	8. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael wasn’t shocked. He could see this coming from ten thousand miles away.

It was a secret.  He wasn't going to tell anybody or send pictures to Barbara like she'd done for him. He wasn't going to take his hoodie off in the middle of class and let people stare. He wore rubber bracelet with his favorite band’s logo on them and a rainbow sweat band with the phrase “Rainbows Are Gay” on it in case his sleeves rode up. The mere thought of someone finding out made his blood turn to ice in his veins.

It was most definitely a secret, and Michael was going to make sure it stayed that way.

The shock of the rubber on the cuts made him smirk, because he knew something that nobody else knew, because he understood, because when he felt something other than the things inside of him, the gray haze lifted from the world. There was just something about keeping a secret from everyone that made Michael want to lock everyone out of his life forever. Everything was fine.

The injuries themselves weren’t even anything spectacular.  Parallel and criss-crossing and diagonal and vertical and horizontal.  Small cuts. Just for him.

He was in love with them.

They were his. Ray and Lindsay and Barbara and Austin weren't in on the joke and that was exactly how Michael wanted to keep it. In a way, it felt as if he had spat in their faces.

I can do this too,  he said to Barbara.

You left me alone, he said to Lindsay.

If we were friends,  you'd notice, he said to Ray.

Everything is fine.

Michael figured out later--much, much later near the end of his high school career--that everything was not fine. Those thoughts weren’t okay and those actions weren’t okay and he was not okay.

However, he wasn’t seeing it any other way. He was irrational. He was scared. He was alone. He wanted new skin because he hated every little thing about the one he had on, so why not carve himself out of it? Maybe he wanted scars like tattoos as well.

Barb and Kara had each other.

Ray and Lindsay had each other.

Austin was leaving.

Who did Michael have? He had his mother and his brothers, but there was just something about not having friends around that made it harder to see the world in color.

Life was a Decemberism in the middle of March.

It had become increasingly obvious to Michael that Barbara didn’t feel all that great about food. She would go through the lunch line at school, but she never ate anything, even when he asked her to. Kara didn’t even get food. She just sat at the table and waited for them to get back and she glared at Michael whenever he asked Barb if she was sure she didn’t want anything to eat. He ignored her.

It had also come to Michael’s attention that maybe Kara wasn’t as good for Barb as Michael had originally thought. Barb hadn’t sent him any pictures since he told her to stop all those months ago. He still woke up to texts from her on some mornings, though.

_I think my mom took my razors and I really need them tonight._

and 

_I just really want to see my own blood right now._

and

_Kara gave me a new razor and it’s the best one I’ve ever had._

__****  
  


Michael got in the car with his mom and his brothers. They drove to Barb’s house and picked her up. His mom dropped Michael and Barbara and David off at the junior high doors. They walked inside. Just like every other day.

They went their separate ways. Got through classes. Spoke in the hallway once.

Michael waited for her to show up in the cafeteria, but she never did. Neither did Kara. He didn’t feel like eating alone, so he didn’t eat at all.

He couldn’t find her in the hallways. She wasn’t in history class. And when he waited for her to show up at his locker after the final bell, the corridor emptied out without her.

When he got in the car with his mother, he told her that he wasn’t sure where Barbara was. He asked her to wait a few more minutes to see if she comes out.

His mother was silent in a way that Michael wasn’t used to. When he looked at her, she just looked sad. “Oh, honey,” was all she said.

“What?”

“They had to take Barb to the hospital.”

Michael’s world didn’t spin out of control. He didn’t go into hysterics at the news. She put a hand on his knee and he asked why, even though he already knew the answer.

“I spoke with her mother. She collapsed in class and the school nurse found cuts on her wrists,” she explained. “God, she sounded so devastated over the phone.”

Barbara would call it bullshit. Her mother wasn’t devastated. she was disappointed because her daughter wasn’t the perfect little girl she always wanted her to be. Michael could see that that wasn't the case at all, but she wasn't being the greatest parent in the world by being absent all the time.

Michael wasn’t shocked. He could see this coming from ten thousand miles away.

On Facebook, nobody was saying a word. Barbara’s wall was void of any hospital talk.

On Myspace, there were comments. Five of them. All from Kara. Michael didn’t read them, nor did he leave any comments of his own. He didn’t make any statuses about or for Barbara. He didn’t write about her in his journal. He didn’t reply to any of Ray’s worried texts or talk to his mom when she asked him if he was okay.

His brain switched to autopilot. He ate dinner. He took a shower. He went to bed early without doing his homework.

The lights were out in his room but he wasn’t sleeping. He could hear David’s steady breathing from the other side of the room but he couldn’t hear Barbara’s laughter inside of his own head. The streetlight in front of their house seeped in through the curtains, flicking fire on the walls and pulling saltwater from his eyes. With blurry vision, he observed his ceiling for the hundredth time and he wondered why he couldn’t seem to save her.  

The next day, everyone asked Michael about Barbara. Even some people who didn't really know either of them.  He guessed they were just curious.  He told everyone the same thing.

"I don't know anything.  I'm as clueless as the rest of you." It was an obvious lie.   Michael knew everything.

He wanted to write her a letter that day.

 _Barbara_ ,

_I know you don't think so, but I think you're amazing._

He crossed out that line.

_I miss you. Everything is going to be fine._

He crossed out that line.

_I wish you wouldn't hurt yourself so much._

He crossed out that line.

_I’m sorry that I let you do this to yourself. I should have--could have stopped you._

He crossed out that line as well.

And he gave up as rage began to build up inside of him. It was quickly covered up by a careful numbness, one that he’d mastered within the last few months.  He stared down at the page, which was covered in scribbles and black lines like failures. That’s what he’d done, after all. He had failed Barbara.

And it was then, with sharp accusations slicing his mind to pieces, that words couldn’t make their way out of him fast enough. They flooded through the tip of his pen and it was all at once or not at all at that point. He stopped when the bell rang throughout the halls and started up again when he sat down in his next class, where his teacher either thought that he was taking notes or just didn't notice him at all. Michael was willing to bet it was the latter.

In art class,  he talked to Austin and told him everything. He listened and he didn't try to be sympathetic because he knew that wasn't what Michael wanted.  When class was over, they walked to maths together. Ray and Lindsay were on him the second he got through the door and quite frankly,  Michael didn't want to deal with either of them.

"He doesn't want to talk about it," Austin told them. Michael was grateful. Ray and Lindsay seemed offended.

When the final bell rang out, Michael was the first one out the door. He opened his locker in record time and he threw his math book inside. The crash of the spine against the metal bottom was satisfying. He wished that he could make that harsh noise stick around for awhile because it reminded him of the inside of his head. Chaotic and out of place.  As he grabbed his bag,  Lindsay and Ray walked past him without a single word or a second glance. He found Austin standing behind his locker door when he slammed it closed.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Michael tried for a smile, but he knew that he'd failed. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

Michaud knew he wasn't buying it because before Austin walked away, he reminded Michael that his phone was open for text messages at all hours.

When he walked through his front door after a Barbara-less drive home, he immediately wanted to leave again. He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go, exactly, but he knew that he’d rather be anywhere but home. But he had nowhere to go but home, so he just went straight to his room, straight to his bed, straight to his journal.

He stared at a blank page for an hour before finally deciding that maybe he couldn’t write because he didn’t want to remember it. However, he did open his notebook. The words he’d written earlier that day, the ones that just waltzed right on out of him, seemed like phrases from days ago, but they were hours old. He read them and reread them and reread them again.

_Reality_

_Ripped to shreds_

_Like days eating away_

_At months on a calendar._

_Where do you want to go from here?_

_With panic on the tip of your tongue_

_You shot the shadows through your veins_

_Tragedy_

_Far too close for comfort_

_You kept secrets at the back of your fragile lungs_

_And shot the shadows through your veins_

_Misery_

_Found its way in_

_Through all of your mind’s mazes_

_Edges like glass_

_Keeping track of all these days_

_Wasted._

_Hollow bones couldn’t hold you together._

_With the salt-sting of tears at the back of your eyes_

_Shattering_

_You shot the shadows through your veins_

_I watched you fall apart_

_And I cried too_

_Tears that fell_

_For the casualties of this war_

_You’ve waged on yourself_

_Where do you want to go from here?_

He signed them “To Barb” with a curly little heart next to her name. And with his signature gracing the lower left corner of the paper, he folded it up and put it inside of his journal.

Maybe one day, he would give it to her.

He placed his journal back in its hiding place, on top of his razor blade. The thing stared up at him for an entire second before it was hidden by black leather once again. An idea crossed his mind.

Don’t use it again.

Except…

Except Michael wasn’t Barbara. He wasn’t going to show it off and tell the world. He wasn’t going to turn himself into a skeleton. Nobody was going to know. He wasn’t going to get caught. He’d be more careful. He’d do this right.

A second thought crossed his mind. A stronger one that made more sense to him.

Save it for later.

Like a strange sense of security. A blanket over his head that’ll keep the monsters under his bed at bay. Someone there to hold his hand when things get rough. It was a promise wrapped in silver and cold that nobody but him could truly appreciate.  A new friend.

Michael wished that life didn’t suck.

 ****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brought to you by my Google Drive app on my phone and tablet. Without them, this wouldn't exist. My laptop situation is still an issue and i have no idea when the next chapter will be up.
> 
> In the meantime, feedback would be lovely!


	9. Detonation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Counting down and down and down...

Barbara came back on the Thursday before spring break. Michael’s mother took them to school half an hour early so that he could help her gather up all of the homework and notes that she’d missed out on. She told him stories about other patients and how her roommate starved herself until she almost died. She told him all about the huge goodbye card they wrote for her on her last day. Everybody signed it and on the inside, the wrote nice things about her. Barb talked as if it had been a vacation, and maybe that was a nice way to look at it. Michael smiled and listened and hoped that the hospital stay was worth it.

Over spring break, Michael hoped that maybe Barbara would invite him to stay the night at least once. Instead, she spent every night at Kara’s house. Michael ended up watching Death Note with David instead. He supposed it could be worse, but that definitely didn’t make him feel any better.

Things were a little strange after that. Barb was trying to get used to living without bad habits. She was eating the tiniest amounts of food during school lunches, even though Kara was completely disgusted. Michael was glad she was trying. The concept of the week long hospital stay didn’t make a lot of sense to him, though, because he was positive that it would take more than a week to fix somebody’s head.  He decided to look at it as if her head was a house.  The doctors removed half of her rooms while they put her up in some strange hotel. Renovations. They knocked walls down and redid the interior. The whole shebang. They sent her back a week later with a nod and a smile, expecting her to settle in and live like those rooms never even existed. No more cutting. No more starving. Put all of the medication and knives under lock and key and post a list of meal plans on the refrigerator door. No more problems, right? Everything was fine, but everything was different.

Michael tried not to be too angry (or surprised)  when Barbara spent all of her free time with Kara. He also tried not to place all of the blame on Kara, because that wasn’t fair (at least, that’s what he kept telling himself).

He tried not to think about how he never left his house, never had an opportunity, because everyone had somebody else. He lived in a constant loop of School-Home-Sleep-Repeat and he hated it so fucking much. He tried not to think about his new little routine that came between Home and Sleep, where almost every night, he added another couple lines to his wrist before he got into bed. He tried to do more than stare down at the cover of his journal, but he couldn’t get the words to come out. Something was blocking his brain. There was just something about wanting to write and not knowing how, but he tried not to be too angry about that.

More than anything, Michael wished his mind had an off switch.

All of the problems inside of Michael’s head had almost nothing to do with the outside world.  Sure, a couple of kids called him fat, and his dad wasn’t around anymore, but he didn’t have to care about those things, even though those things are probably the things that ruined his head in the first place.  He chose to stick with Barb throughout everything. He chose to put up with Lindsay and Ray’s bullshit. He’s the one who let Austin in in the first place.

He did not, however, choose these feelings. These shitty I-want-to-hug-you-all-the-time and the let-me-hold-your-goddamn-hand and the you’re-going-to-leave-and-I-don’t-want-to-have-to-deal-with-it feelings for Austin. He didn’t want to feel like the world was ending every time he thought about Barbara relapsing. They could cross that bridge when they got there, anyway. And he certainly didn’t want to have to deal with feeling inadequate and oh so fucking out of their league every time Lindsay and Ray let him know that he wasn’t invited and that he wasn’t welcome and that he wasn’t good enough wasn’t cool enough wasn’t the same as them wasn’t anything good--

\--Michael wanted to be numb.

And April was the month that life decided that having a screw loose upstairs wasn’t enough.

Somebody decided somewhere along the way that since Michael spent a lot of time with Barb, it meant that they were exactly the same.

“Do you cut yourself, too?” someone sneered as he opened his locker one day. He felt his face pale and his blood turn to ice, because he could not let them know.

“I bet you’re gay, too, aren’t you?” a boy from his history class asked. It was easy to deny.

After that, things escalated in a bad way.

Slurs of _freak_ and _faggot_ echoed off the walls in his head, bouncing off of one another until it was all he could hear, all he could pay attention to, all he could believe.

“Kill yourself,” Kyle said to him one day, whispered so no one else could hear it, but loud enough to shake Michael’s entire world.

“Go fuck yourself, Kyle,” he’d said, but the idea was already in his head, taking root. So absurd, yet completely possible if he so wished. Michael had never felt quite so small.

He did not cut himself in April. He wasn’t going to let anybody be right about him. There was no way in hell.

May came crashing down around him, sneaking up in a way that only months can. Writing the date at the top of his homework startled him more than it should have, and suddenly there was a counter in his head, like the timer on a bomb. FIfteen days until detonation. It was a blur of end-of-the-year assignments, exams, and final art projects. Michael was making wind chimes. Austin was watching because he’d finished his splatter painting already.

“I’m not going to miss this place,” Austin said. “I think I hate it here.”

And, yeah, Michael understood. Fuck, he understood so well that it struck something deep inside of him. It made him want to hold Austin’s hand that much more. “I think I hate it here, too.”

“I’ve already started packing.”

 _Fifteen days_. “Yeah?” He did not want to say anything. He wanted Austin to keep talking. Keep talking and talking and talking until Michael got sick of the soft tone and the carefree way he let his words fall forth and the way his speech slurred slightly when he was only half paying attention.  Maybe then he wouldn’t care if Austin left.

Austin watched him carefully sculpt the tail of a small swallow, which would be one of the chimes hanging from the main piece. Birds are lucky, Michael thought. Birds get to fly away and move on as they see fit.

“I’m mostly just seeing if I can get rid of anything. Like, I’m not too thrilled about taking a thousand boxes to my dad’s house, y’know?”

“Totally. Get that shit out of there.” Michael wondered if the tail was too thin. If it was, then it would chip away at the first sign of a breeze.

“Also, did you know that there are only fifteen days of school left?”

Michael sighed. “Yep. I’ve been counting.”

“Fucking crazy.”

“When are you leaving?”

“The day after. Sixteen days from now.”

Michael didn’t say a word. He was running a needle tool over every surface of the clay, attempting to make sure that it was perfect in every possible way. He didn’t care if the tail was fragile. He had three other swallows to complete. The others would have better tails. The others would be better.

“I don’t think anybody here is going to miss me anyway.”

And stop, heart and head and hands. He glanced up at Austin who was staring at the needle tool in Michael’s hand. His face was blank in a way that gave absolutely nothing away. “I’m going to miss you,” Michael said.

Their eyes met. The blank expression was replaced with something else. Mild surprise. Maybe confusion. A sense of whywhywhy that Michael never got the chance to properly fix.

The bell rang.

They didn’t mention it again.

Fourteen days.

Michael finished his wind chimes and Austin helped him make holes and loops for the strings. They talked about music.

Thirteen days. Michael and Austin started drawing flowers on a sheet of newsprint paper. Daisies were the easiest. Lilies were the most difficult.

Twelve days.

Saturday.  Austin never messaged him and Michael was too afraid to text him first.

Eleven days.

Michael thought really hard about writing it all down in his journal. The countdown. The conversations. The kids at school. The things his friends did. The thoughts in his head. How right everyone was about him. The new idea Kyle had planted somewhere in his mind without his say-so.

He decided not to. If, on the off chance, his mother grew concerned, Michael didn’t want any evidence. Nothing for her to use against him. Nothing to hurt her. He didn’t want her to feel as if any of this was her fault, because that was not the case.

Ten days turns to nine, which turned to five, which turned to three far too fast. Life seemed more like seconds thrown away by the hands of a clock. Carpe Diem, they said, but they never warned him about time’s swift nature. Michael felt like a sad song stuck on repeat. He was wearing himself out.

 

The day before the last day of school, Ray and Lindsay were at his throat.

Austin and Michael walked from art class to algebra. They sat down in their seats and talked until the bell rang. The teacher was late again. There was a feeling in the air, the End Of The School Year hum and the dragging of time. Summer was so damn close that everyone could taste the sun on their skins.

“Austin,” Lindsay began. “Can you switch Michael seats?”

His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I always sit here.”

“Don’t care. Switch him.”

Michael felt irritation color his features and something shifted in the atmosphere. Two days of the school year left and Lindsay decided it was okay to have him around. “I’m fine where I’m at, thanks,” he cut in.

Ray turned in his seat to glare at Austin. “Seriously? Just switch seats. It’s no big deal.”

“Ever think that maybe he doesn’t want to?” Austin shot back.

The teacher walked in. Everyone turned around. Michael was angry.

The assignment was handed out. Sudoku puzzles. Michael hated them, but Austin was really good with numbers, so they pushed their desks together and worked through the first puzzle, arms touching and with conversation in between.

“Alright,” their teacher said halfway through the class period. “I’m leaving for a few minutes. Got to help the substitute across the hall with some computer issues. If you’re having troubles, ask a friend for help.”

That was when shit hit the fan.

Michael wished that actual shit had hit an actual fan. If they were all covered in fecal matter, it would have given him something to show for it, like a scar. No. He got the figurative shit and the figurative fan. A mess that nobody could see. They were hit with an overused metaphor and hard words. No reasons to feel so shitty when it was all over. No battle scars to show off and absolutely no evidence of what happened.

The second the teacher was out the door, Lindsay looked Michael in the eye. “You’re being an asshole.” she accused.

In his eyes, he hadn’t done anything wrong because he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary.  

Lindsay was on her feet with fire in her eyes. She grabbed Austin by the arm and pulled him up and to the back of the room. Nobody else noticed the hushed conversation going on, the angry words, or how completely out of line it all was. Michael gaped for a few seconds before turning to Ray.

“My parents are splitting up,” Ray said, as if that explained anything. “But I guess you don’t care.”

Irritation turned to rage fast in his gut. He was up and in Lindsay’s space in a single heartbeat, just in time to hear her say it.

“You need to stop keeping Michael away from us.” She spat the words in Austin’s face. An accusation. An assumption. A _lie_.

“Lindsay,” Michael attempted to keep his voice calm and level, but his voice shook with frantic anger. “Leave him the fuck out of this.”

“You piece of crap,” she snarled. “Ray needs you.”

“I guess it would’ve been nice if Ray had said something.” He turned around and found Ray gaping at him in a way that only made him angrier. He picked up his stuff and moved to sit in an empty seat at the back of the room. Austin moved with him. The rest of the class passed in silence. Michael never finished his Sudoku puzzles.

When the bell rang, Austin was the first one out the door. Michael attempted to be the second, but a hand caught his elbow.

“Can we talk?” Ray asked.

“Probably not.”

Barbara met him at his locker. She took one look at him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“I am now,” he muttered into her shoulder.

When Austin passed them, he kept his head down. Michael wanted to punch a wall, but his hands were bunched up in Barb’s jacket.

Ray called him three hours after he got home. Michael stepped outside so that his mother didn’t have to worry about anything, in case she decided to listen in. It was something like sixty degrees outside. The sky was overcast, just like the inside of Michael’s head.

“You owe both of us an apology,” Ray said, as if all of this was Michael’s fault. As if Michael not being good enough for them was his own doing. As if he did all of this on purpose.

“Do you really expect me to apologize? Lindsay basically jumped my best friend--”

“We’re your best friends, Michael. Not him.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Ray?” he shouted. “Where the fuck have you two been all semester? Because I certainly haven’t seen much of either of you.”

“Oh, you’re so fucking wrapped up in Austin that you can’t seem to make time for anyone else. Can you really not see what’s right in front of you?”

“Why don’t you fucking tell me? What am I missing?”

“He’s fucking _straight_!”

They both fell silent. It was like watching a movie of himself, on his front porch, phone pressed to his ear, face red and mouth pressed together in a perfectly straight line. He could see it all, crystalline clear. “You haven’t wanted to sit next to me in algebra all fucking year, and now suddenly you want to dump your family drama on me?”

“Michael, it’s not like that.”

“So what is it like then?”

“I just--” he cut himself off. “I feel like we haven’t talked in months.”

“Because we haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me, Ray.”

“You just been so unreachable and--”

“Me? _Unreachable_?”

“You practically cling to Barb and fucking Austin. When was there ever time for me? For Lindsay?”

Michael thought about every night spent inside staring holes into the cover of his journal, cutting holes into the skin of his arms, thinking holes into the darkness that he let himself trip and fall into every night. All of his time outside of school was spent surviving. His inbox may have been filled with texts from Barb and Austin, but he rarely saw Barb without seeing a bank of lockers and he had never spent time with Austin outside of class. It was a side effect of Michael’s inability (more like a mental block made from anxiety and Not Good Enough) to ask anybody if they wanted to hang out.

“Are we going to talk or are you going to keep telling me all of the things you think I’m doing wrong?”

Ray sighed. “You’re wasting your time. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And I never once asked for your advice.”  A heavy silence fell over them. Michael was suffocating. He hoped that Ray was suffocating, as well. “So are we done?”

“You aren’t going to ask me how I’m doing?”

He didn’t say anything at first, having been caught off guard by the question. Why should he when Ray never once asked him anything like that? The tension grew until Michael was choking on it. He was afraid and there was a small part of him that missed Ray and Lindsay. He didn’t want this to be the end. “How are you doing?” Too afraid to stand up for himself. Too afraid to start a war.

Ray launched into a story Michael already knew by heart. He’d lived it himself years ago. The only difference was that Ray didn’t have as much time to get used to the idea of not having his father around.

Everything was exactly the same. Dad wasn’t being very dad-like. Parents were fighting all the time. He’d beat one of Ray’s dogs. Ray talked for fifteen minutes straight and Michael never said a single word.

“Hey, I’m glad we’re talking again, but I have to go. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sure. Bye, Ray.”

They hung up.

He pulled his phone away from his ear and watched the words CALL ENDED blink several times before the screen just went completely black. There was a slight breeze and a dove cooing from a power line overhead. Grey skies loomed, a clean slate or an empty shell. Michael couldn’t tell which it was.

Why didn’t Ray ask him how he’d been?

Was he going to be there when Austin left?

His mother opened the door and told him to come inside for dinner. He pocketed his phone and went inside and he attempted to let his mind wander away from him. From detonation. From the journal and the razor blade. From friends who only wanted him when they needed something.

Today sucked, Michael thought.

And tomorrow wasn’t going to be anything but worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left! Gavin is in it! Get excited! Might have an epilogue to add on. Still deciding. And I'm already writing the sequel, which is super mavin-filled and it'll be more...descriptive instead of narrative. Sorry if you were expecting more of Gavin. To be honest, I wasn't planning on moving this slow through the story line, so I guess this is more like me setting up for the real thing. This is the back story. Lemme know what you think!


	10. maybe Morrissey was on to something.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things don't quite go the way Michael wanted them to. In fact, things played out worse than he thought they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gavin makes an appearance, but it's not much. I probably should've tagged for eventual mavin so i didn't get your guys' hopes up. :/ Sorryyyy.
> 
> This is the final chapter! The sequel is currently being written, but I'm having issues titling it. I really like "The Pros and Cons of Bathing With Your Toaster," but I think I saw that somewhere once. Like it's the title of some fic that I read years and years ago, but i cannot remember. I don't want to steal that title. Otherwise I'm thinking "Tear Those Pictures Off The Wall," which is a line from my favorite Marianas Trench song.
> 
> So like, I'm assigning this chapter a song. "Asleep" by The Smiths. Listen to it. It's great. 
> 
> Thank you guys who've been with me from the beginning! ^.^ Special thanks to everyone who commented. You guys made me want to keep this going. Kicked my ass into gear and got me to finish this faster than I've finished anything in my entire life <3 <3 <3 You're all amazing :D

Michael woke up on the last day of school to a phone call from Barbara, when his timer was fixed at zero and things were set to detonate at any moment.

“I’m staying home sick.”

His eyes were still closed and his face was half buried in his pillow. “Are you fucking kidding me?” The sheets pooling around his waist felt like safety, and he didn’t want to get out of bed if he wasn’t going to have Barbara around to hide behind. _Today of all days_.

“More or less...I just don’t feel like going. We’re not doing anything important today, anyway.”

“I’ll pay you money if you go to school today, Barb,” Michael pleaded.

“You mean your mom’s money? No way. Your mom’s a nice lady. You’ll be fine without me.” she said. Her head was already set on the idea. With a sigh and a tired goodbye, Michael let her go. The blue fabric of his pillowcase was beginning to get too warm, so he rolled over onto his back. His room was lit by the light spilling in through the window. There were birds chirping outside of his window and he wanted to stuff rocks down their throats. He realized that the world wasn’t going to stop today, no matter how much he wanted it to.

It was all downhill from there.

Michael was five minutes late to homeroom. Through the doors and down the hall, past the library, and he walked into the room. An apology was already on his tongue and halfway out of his mouth, but he was interrupted. He was five minutes late to homeroom and in those five minutes, the teacher had decided that playing an “awesome end-of-the-year game” was in order.

“You’re my partner, Michael!” he heard an accented voice exclaim before he could even let the door close behind him. On the opposite side of the room, Gavin fucking Free was smiling at him.

“What?” He was trying for confused, but it came out more terrified.

Their teacher spoke before Gavin could answer him. “Go ahead and set your stuff down,” he said. “We’re heading outside.”

Michael trailed behind the group and he watched Gavin as he talked animatedly to a couple of kids that never gave anybody else the time of day. There was something like nervousness settling in his chest, pressing in on his lungs and invading his brain.

“Alright, find your partner. One of you gets a water gun and the other gets a candle stick.”

In a single second, Gavin was in his face with a big water gun in one hand and a candle in the other. Michael had never felt more out of place. “Do you know what we’re doing?” Gavin asked.

“No,” was all Michael could get out. He couldn’t even pretend to care.

“Right. Well, one of us is holding the candle and the other has to put it out with the water pistol.”

He looked around himself and his mind started racing. Everyone around them was probably thinking the same thing. Poor Gavin, all of his friends partnered up with someone else. He got stuck with that weird kid Michael Jones. He’s gay, you know. He’s gay and he cuts himself. Poor Gavin.

And Michael knew that Gavin was going to make him hold the candle and he was going to be blasted with water. His baggy shirt would stick to his body and he couldn’t bare the thought of people seeing him. He’d been called fat all his life and after this, everyone might as well be seeing him fucking naked--

“I kind of want to be the one to hold the candle,” Gavin informed him. “I mean...if that’s alright.”

Michael blinked. His brain halted completely. If brains were made of metal and wires, his would be spitting sparks and melting down, gears running themselves hot, because what? “Why would you want me to squirt water at you?”

The other boy just shrugged and smirked. “Sounds like fun. And I’ll take that as a yes.”

His homeroom teacher was putting a blindfold over his eyes within seconds and Michael’s head still hadn’t slowed down. He could hear a match being struck and then it was just him and Gavin again. Michael still felt like he didn’t quite belong there, so he pumped the water gun to distract himself.

“Alright, kids. Stand across from your partners and on my count, fire!”

A short countdown from three and then a shout of Go! had Michael pulling the trigger on the water gun repeatedly as Gavin screamed and squealed. Michael could tell that he was flailing.

“Hold still, idiot,” Michael demanded through gritted teeth.

“Ow! My eye!” Gavin laughed.

“Well if you’d hold _fucking still_ \--”

:”Michael, please!”

He pulled the trigger one final time and heard Gavin shout in triumph.

“Did I get it?”

Gavin chuckled a little bit. “Yeah, you did.”

He yanked the blindfold from his face and stared at the boy in front of him. The front of his grey t-shirt was striped with water and his face looked as if it had taken most of the hits. He was still laughing. Michael was just glad that it was over.

“That was top,” Gavin said to him.

They watched the rest of the pairs struggle with the task at hand, but neither of them said another word to each other.

In history class, he turned in his textbook. In life sciences, the entire class helped their teacher clean the tops of the desks. In English, computer studies, and study hall, the teachers decided that everybody needed to relax. Michael sat alone at lunch.

Art class rolled around fast. The teacher was helping everyone gather up their projects. Michael’s folder was completely filled with practice sketches and massive drawings and acrylic paintings. He had a small shoebox with his clay sculptures inside of it and he was ready to go with about five minutes of class time to spare.

“How can you possibly be that organized with that many sketches?” Austin asked him as he shuffled through a messy stack of papers.

“Probably because I’m not a fucking idiot,” Michael quipped, but he pulled half of the mess away from Austin to help him sift through it. Math assignments fell in with book reports fell in with essays about the Mayans fell in with notes about sea life fell in with drawings of cars fell in with--

“Can you believe we’re going to be freshmen next year?” Austin asked, sounding like he was completely shocked.

Michael rolled his eyes. “Well, I mean, it was bound to happen at some point.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” he sighed. “But still. High school. No more of this holding-my-hand shit. It’s going to be different. Better.”

Better. In Michael’s head, everything was better. Ray and Lindsay had never pulled that stupid stunt the day before. Ray had never called Michael after school. Kara didn’t exist. Austin wasn’t leaving. Austin was going to join Michael on his first day as a freshman in high school. Except--

“I haven’t decided which school I want to go to,” Austin told him. “There are three in the city, and I can’t pick one.”

\--Except, that wasn’t the case.

The bell rang. One class period left and Michael would be free for three months. One class period left and he would never see Austin again.

“Come to my house after school,” Michael found himself saying to Austin. They were walking out of the room and down the hallway, Michael with his folder and his box, Austin with a folder stuffed full of everything he needed and nothing of import and his sculpture of a Trans Am.

He looked up at Michael. “Seriously?”

Heart hammering, head spinning, lungs collapsing. He shouldn’t be so scared. “Y-yeah. I mean, I won’t see you...for awhile.” _or ever again._

“Um, yeah. Yeah, definitely,” he replied as they entered the gym. People were all around them, carrying draw string bags and tennis shoes. “I’ll have to check with my mom first, though. Make sure it’s okay. It should be."

He turned his head away and he smiled at the bleachers.

In their math class, Austin did not sit where he normally sat. He let Michael have the seat right behind Ray and Lindsay and MIchael took it. Not because he wanted to, but because he didn’t want a repeat of the day before.  

“Alright, guys,” the teacher began. The entire class fell silent. “We have a school assembly in ten minutes. Feel free to kick back and relax.”

Lindsay and Ray were talking within seconds. Michael stood up and sat down in his chair backwards so that he could face Austin. He was still trying to organize his mess of a folder, so Michael took another handful of papers and began sorting. They filled a trashcan with incomplete and unimportant homework assignments.

A voice came over the intercom that informed everyone of the assembly. Everyone left the room, their final class of the year. They walked side by side. It took everything Michael had to not reach out for Austin’s hand. They sat side by side in the bleachers as the principal explained that the assembly was for an end of the year dodgeball game. “Whoever wants to play, come line up next to me,” he explained. Several people ran down to the floor.

“Come on, Michael,” Austin urged.

“Nah, you go ahead,” he told him. “Not really my thing.”

“Suit yourself.” Austin ran to the floor. Michael watched him talk to several of the other kids and he sighed. This was it.

The principal split everyone into two teams and after throwing bags of balls to each team, the match began. Austin’s team got slaughtered in the first round. A couple of boys took a spill towards the end of the game and somebody got a ball stuck in one of the lights on the ceiling. Austin’s team lost round two as well.

When he came back to his seat, Michael ruffled his hair. “Nice job, buddy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Austin swatted at the hand on his head. “The other team’s on ‘roids, I’m sure of it.”

The principal wished everyone going off to high school good luck and he told everybody to have a fantastic summer. The band played the school fight song and the entire student body clapped along, driven by summer excitement and the promise of freedom.  When they were dismissed, Austin and Michael raced to their lockers to grab the last of their belongings.

Austin met Michael at his locker. “Ready to go?”

Austin was staring down at his phone, blank-faced and not listening. “Yeah, I’ll be right back.”

Michael cleared out the last few items at the bottom of his locker before closing it for the last time. With his back to the cool metal, he decided to wait for the other boy. A minute after Austin had walked off, Lindsay jumped in to fill the empty space. “Summer!” she exclaimed.

Michael faked a smile. “Ready to get out of this shit hole?” he asked.

“Most definitely. Ray and I are having a bonfire tonight,” she told him as she switched her messenger bag from one shoulder to the other.

“Sounds like fun.”

“Yeah,” Ray cut in. “We’re burning all of our notes and shit.”

Michael shouldn’t have asked.

“Are you waiting for Barbara?” Lindsay asked.

“No. She’s sick today. I’m waiting for Austin.”

“He left a minute ago,” Ray told him as he typed out a text on his phone.

MIchael’s head shot up so fast, he could have given himself whiplash. “What?”  _No._

“Yeah,” Ray said as he pocketed the phone. “I saw him get into his mom’s car.”

“Right.” Michael faked another smile. “Okay. Well, you two have fun tonight.” _Nonono, that couldn't be it._  He wanted them to leave.

“Oh we will,” Lindsay said. “See you around, Michael.”

It was a “goodbye” if Michael had ever heard one. It stung just the same. Not quite as much as “I’ll be right back” did, but man, it was up there.

He stood with his back to his locker in the near complete silence of the near abandoned junior high building. When his phone vibrated in his hand, he jolted back to reality. He knew that he’d been stood there for far too long. His mother was calling him. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him not to leave yet, so he took a lap around the building, through every hall, in every restroom, through the library and back again. Austin really had left, he decided.

If Michael were to pinpoint it, that was the moment of detonation.

And so he made his way to the parking lot where his mother’s car was parked. She was the only one left.

“What took you so long, honey?” she asked him when he got in the car. His brothers looked bored.

The time on his phone read 3:45PM. “Sorry, mom. I had to clean out my locker.” _And float off into the blank space in my mind for fifteen minutes_.

 

At home, Michael unloaded his bag on his bedroom floor. David and Jimmy were in the living room watching movies. Ray and Lindsay were getting ready for a bonfire. Austin was packing.

Without even looking for stray poems, Michael threw every single notebook into his trashcan. Math homework and history notes fell in soon after, followed shortly by English papers and book reports. All of it had to go.

He decided that his art folder was too big. Too much. He threw away every practice sketch, starting with the newsprint paper flowers that Austin helped him draw. They wouldn’t mean a thing to him in a few years’ time, anyway. Or, at least, that was what he was telling himself.

The clay sculpture in the shoebox was moved to one of his shelves. The wind chimes, on the other hand, remained in the box. He stared them down. All of the places where Michael had been extra careful with his needle tool seemed completely out of place. They were perfect in a way that nothing else in his life could ever come close to. The swallow’s thin tail had already snapped off, just like he knew it would. Some of the knots in the strings were coming loose, as well. The glaze was chipping in places and he couldn’t stand it.  Michael saw a metaphor in the wind chimes, tucked in the holes that Austin had looped the strings through mere days ago, hiding inside the cracks in the glaze and in the space the swallow’s tail should be in.

Falling apart.

He threw the wind chimes away, too.

Nothing remained on the floor, so he shoved his bag under the bed. No more distractions. Nothing to keep the things inside from boiling over. Michael was about to spill.

He crawled over to his stereo and plugged his mp3 player in. The Smiths began to come through the speakers and he turned the volume up until it was loud enough to drown out the sound of the birds outside of his window. The chorus of _How Soon Is Now_ was seeping into every crack inside his head, into every single space that the loose screws had made. Michael wondered why his eyes hadn’t burnt two holes into his ceiling yet. He felt as if he did this every single day because he couldn’t even fathom doing anything else with his time. It all had seemed too exhausting.

The newness of that first-day-of-summer feeling had completely abandoned him, leaving behind something cold and hollow. Michael didn’t like it. Michael just wanted to feel nothing.

 _How Soon Is Now_ faded into _Asleep_. Michael sighed and closed his eyes. There was a throbbing in his veins that he recognized as anger and a burn in his chest that he knew had to be because of Austin.

_Sing me to sleep._

_Sing me to sleep._

_I don't want to wake up_

_On my own anymore._

And there was a newer feeling. One that only went skin deep until suddenly, it didn’t. A phantom pain in his wrist, under the cuts that he’d let heal over in April. It turned into suffocation, like his skin was too tight. He needed to relieve the pressure somehow.

_Don't feel bad for me._

_I want you to know_

_Deep in the cell of my heart_

_I will feel so glad to go._

But it wasn’t working. Michael could feel everything getting ready to spill over. He needed to be able to catch the pieces.

His journal felt cold and unused in his hands, but God, it felt like home to him. He opened up to the next blank page.

_May 15th, 2008_

_I don’t really want to talk about it, but I need to talk about it_ , he began. _but I have no idea where I should begin_.

He decided to start with Ray and Lindsay. Barb and Kara.  Austin moving. In that order.

_It’s as if everybody decided that I didn’t belong. There wasn’t anywhere for me to go, so I didn’t go anywhere. I’ve spent so much time in my room these past few months that it’s almost as if I don’t exist anymore. I get up, I show my face at school, and I leave._

Barb’s hospital stay. Barb’s demons. Barb’s slow recovery.

_Most days, I wanted to grab her face and force her to look me in the eye. I wanted to scream at her to eat because it shouldn’t be that hard. And I know I know I know that isn’t the way this work. It isn’t a phase she can grow out of and it isn’t something we can convince her to quit. It’s so much bigger than that. Is it bad that I’m so exhausted from watching her that I almost want to quit her altogether?_

Ray and Lindsay and Austin fighting in class.

Ray and Lindsay think that I live this spectacular life where Austin and Barbara and Kara want me around at all times. Where I don’t have time for Ray and Lindsay. Where I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. That isn’t the case. It never was. Austin and I have never spent time outside of school and Barb and Kara would rather spend time together. These four walls are where I’ve spent the entire semester and not a fucking person realizes this.

Austin moving. Austin leaving. “I’ll be right back.”

_The worst part is that he doesn’t realize. He doesn’t know because I never fucking told him. I asked him to come over after school. And he left. Ray saw him get into his mom’s car.  Ray watched him leave and he doesn’t understand what happened. He left without saying goodbye. The last thing Austin said to me was “I’ll be right back,” Okay, no, I changed my mind. The worst part isn’t that Austin doesn’t realize. The worst part is that nobody understands why this hurts. Austin left without saying goodbye. One hundred miles might as well be one thousand. I may never see him again and nobody understands._

_Michael wrote. He wrote it all down, filling page after page after page until his hand cramped and his legs began to go numb from how they had been crossed for the last hour, two hours, three, however long he’d been sat there. The songs shuffled until they started to repeat again and he was listening to Asleep once again. He was spilling and Morrissey was the only one who understood what it felt like._

_Don't try to wake me in the morning_

_'Cause I will be gone._

When he looked around his room, he saw that the sun streaming in through his window was sunset orange. There were crickets chirping outside of his window and his mother would undoubtedly be knocking on his door in a few minutes to call him to dinner. He wrote his final words, like a prayer, a promise, his Famous Last Words, and he set his pen down.

The razor stared up at him from its hiding spot and the world finally stopped. There was nothing except for him and a sharp object. He stared and stared and stared until he heard Morrissey’s voice come back to him through the haze. Exhaling a harsh breath, Michael caused some dust to rise off of it. Silver and cold, it had been too long, he decided. It felt like seeing a new friend. Michael wondered if he’d feel the same way if he were to ever see Austin again.

The metal was cold on his fingers for a split second before warming to his touch as he slipped the blade into his pocket.

_I've got seemingly infinite ink and pages and a mind that likes to blip dead at the best of times.  Wish me luck, World. It seems I’m taking you on alone, but then again, why should I be so surprised?_

_Until Next Time,_

_Michael **.**_


End file.
